How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Everybody was having a good time, everybody in the world, in the universe, everybody but her, alone and bored. Everybody was loving everybody else, everybody was drinking wine and smoking dope and dancing and sitting on each other's laps and whispering in each other's ears." (9.65)
Connie has a gift for utopian hippie visions. The perfect society here is the whole world drunk and sexy. (And then Connie goes to the future and everyone has a party and is drunk and sexy. Utopia!)
Quote #8
"Poor Alice!" Sybil shook her head. "She must be humiliated! Imagine playing up to that fascist because he presses a button." (10. 152)
The doctors are compared to fascists, which seems like it's meant to be taken fairly literally. That is, the doctors wield arbitrary power over people who are seen as less than human. The brain implants are a kind of perfected authoritarian control; Hitler would have used them if he could.
Quote #9
"Hello monster," he said softly.
"Hello, monster," she said back, and smiled for the first time since her operation. "There's too little of you and too much of me." (14.102)
Skip and Connie are joking bitterly about the fact that they've been turned into monsters. The monster-ing is not just from the operations. They're monsters because the people with power see them as monsters—for being poor, or homosexual, or female, or Hispanic. Social class, and power, creates monsters. (Now if only Connie could turn into the Incredible Hulk and smash her way out, the book might have had a happier ending.)